“I tell my children to work hard because it is how we will fight the poverty. My children bring me the most happiness- I have seven of them and they are all farmers too.” Ninasi’s role model is the person who taught him how to farm. In Burundi, subsistence farming is how most of the …
Growing Coffee is like raising a child. You have to wash them, nurture them, and look after them. We spent part of a Saturday at Dorothy’s house on Gaharo hill. The minute she saw our baby Ari she scooped her up and led our whole family into her home. The dirt floors were cleanly swept …
Our Burundi coffee reminds me of lilacs and saddles. Clearly, that’s not an educated flavor or taste profile. I’ve spent the last 16 years of my life in Africa, but these reminders are a nod to my Midwest American roots. I grew up craving everything that had to do with horses. My parents couldn’t afford …
Our exit from Burundi was like molasses falling steady from a spoon, sticky and slow. Lifting ourselves from the land was a process full of attempts to stay. After several years of struggling to call Burundi “home,” now I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the place that had taught me so many of my …
The Antestia bug From far off, the Burundian countryside is a vast expanse of green carpeted rolling hills. Each hill is a distinct geopolitical unit known as a ‘colline’ (‘hill’ in French). Get closer to a colline and a tapestry of patchwork farming appears: a square of banana trees, a patch of cassava, a large …
Rain is falling gently on the banana leaves outside my window. School kids are shouting and laughing. Motorbikes are whizzing past piled high with boxes, goats, people, bananas, grass, and even entire beds on their backs. This is normal life here, and in Burundi “normal” can be very very hard for many. Today is the International Day …
